We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Russia and China will not form a real alliance unless the India-China competition can be resolved. Otherwise, Russian support for India and Chinese support for Pakistan will always disrupt the Russian-Chinese relationship.

On the other hand, if a Chinese-Indian rapproachment is achieved, it will mark the end of Western domination.

Pity that the interest and western public charity dried up since; a. The epidemic was never stamped out, it still infects new patients. b. For the first time there are large numbers of survivors and many of them are dealing with Ebola related medical issues. Mostly full or partial blindness.

And the virus continues to mutate. You might say that it has left the nest and is out in the world.

Formal wear causing changes in cognition, has any one considered the effects of constricted blood flow due to ties?

Cities burning, pish posh, the important parts of the city are clean and orderly. The less important parts are ignored since they vote right, don't have the mayor and council on speed dial and serve as a conduit for dollars.

Spring is here and so time for more AFV driving and gunnery practice by the Russians is par for the course.

Return of the isolationist, spend the peace dividend three fold lobby is a given. However, since many know what side of the croissant is buttered, doubt we'll see many leaving Team Hillary for Team Sanders.

Baltimore prosecutions; Two weeks, 28 charges. The (female, black) State's Prosecutor a product of the forced busing in Boston decades ago. Comes (it is said) from a cop family. Must be ambitious.

If I threw a guy into the truck of my car, drove around a while and when the trunk was opened the guy was dead, then I’d expect to be charged with manslaughter but not murder. But a cop, on duty, has more expectation of immunity then I would. However wrote up these charges is ignoring that and the reality of urban policing.
So I’ll go out on a limb and predict that maybe one of these Manslaughter charges is supported, some of these officers lose their jobs, all of them spend a hell of a lot of money on their defense which will be dwarfed by the millions the city and state will spend. In the end, Baltimore will continue it’s downward slide with burnt out buildings remaining as a reminder and with most of the police force mainly interested in not following the Freddie Gray 6 into the belly of the beast.

If there are not convictions for serious charges, it will be a replay of the Rodney King riots. If there are, the exodus of police will not start but accelerate as will the exodus of the middle class (black and white).

Such is the fate for cities that have been run entirely from the left for decades (eg. Detroit). In a way, that is a little unfair as almost all large cities are run by demoncrats and some successful ones have been for decades. One might consider San Francisco, but it's incredibly expensive to live in San Francisco so the population tends to be educated and financially secure (and as long as we're talking race, mostly non black). The myth that Chicago is successful will be on full display sooner rather than later.

Now before anybody gets on their hind legs about the black angle, they are the group most granted victim status and most of their kids are brought up on how society/the man/ white men have kept them down. That lie (or at least that it necessarily determinative) is born out by the mayor and the rest of the entire Baltimore government - as misguided or wrong as they may be).

Unless or until there is a mass movement that encourages those kids to be responsible (especially with regard to sex), to get an education (which the current Baltimore school system has proven involves independence from it), Baltimore is doomed. It is a fate it will share with other similar cities and no amount of money poured into it will change that.

As the photos finally released show only half of the police officers charged are white. The sole murder charge went to a negro. Who lives out of the city.
And it doesn't seem that there's a Irishman in the bunch!

What it is perhaps is the fate, if we advance 50 years, of every city in the US that allows itself to be ruled by a single political party. If that party shows more faith in ideology then professionalism, the opinions of the mob over that of the rule of law.

There is more to this than we are being told. There was another prisoner in the paddy wagon and he has told his story and it doesnt include the "rough ride" the media made up. Also the DA gave the media (through her partner) enough info to identify the other prisoner who was then interviewed and in that interview he denied that he said the prisoner who died was trying tohurt himself. BUT subsequently it is discovered that the DA intentionally feed the media enough so that they would interview the wrong guy!! But wait! Not only is he the wrong guy but he is the guy with Freddy Grey when he was arrested! He has a reason to lie and he was coached. Why would any honest DA do something like this? She would have to know it would come out eventually. At this point I distrust the media narrative, the DA, the Mayor and the police chief. I think these six officers are being thrown under the bus. Di one or more of them rough up Grey and deserve prosecution? Maybe but the coronor says the fatal inury occurred in the paddy wagon and theere is zero evidence that any of those cops got into the back of the paddy wagon except to help Grey get out.

Re African IQ, this is more of a cultural thing, but it is interesting.

Years ago Wretch at Belmont Club wrote:

"Years ago when traveling in the Congo, I boarded an airplane bound for one of the interior towns. The aircraft was an Ilyushin and before it took off a very strange thing happened. Several dozen passengers went forward to look inside the pilot’s cabin, including the man, an African gentleman in a business suit, who sat beside me. My wonder at the strange proceedings increased when my rowmate returned an announced in a satisfied voice, “homme blanche”. The pilot was a white man and it was safe to travel on the airplane.

The pilots, upon further inquiry were apparently Slavs, whether from Russia or another one of the Slavic countries, I could never determine. Not exactly people who would inspire automatic confidence in a Western airport. But the incident got me to thinking about what my seatmate meant by the “homme blanche”. It turned out to mean something rather different in that setting. For example, if you were black but a black American, you might be the “homme blanche” in Africa.

And it’s not limited to African Americans. In that setting, the Japanese for example, are homme blanche as well. It’s hard to describe, but you will soon get the drift. Once abroad one comes face to face with the fact that the West still has a legend. The fact of Western-ness is a de facto assumption that you are qualified to lead. The doors of the local elite will open to you on the strength of your culture. And if you fit the bill and show your quality, then right, you are the white man, whatever your skin color. The mystique of the West has almost magical qualities. I remember someone calling me long distance once and asking me to look up something on the Internet. When I asked, over the crackly connection, why he didn’t go to some Internet cafe and look it up himself, he replied “the Internet is different there.” A large part of the power of the West derives from the memory of its once-dominant competence."

The Evolution of One Person’s Views
on Racial Differences in Intelligence

Lawrence Auster
February 1995

With the publication of The Bell Curve, we see the fascinating phenomenon of mainstream journalists and intellectuals wrestling, most of them for the first time, with the uncomfortable facts about race differences in intelligence. While this is a historic event, it can also seem rather disappointing. Apart from the writers who demonize the book’s co-authors, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, which was to be expected, even those more thoughtful liberals and conservatives who (grudgingly) admit the subject of race and intelligence into discourse hedge it around with so many qualifications as to make it almost meaningless. Thus William Buckley acknowledged the reality of the racial IQ difference, but then quoted Murray and Herrnstein to the effect that it’s not important. Scott McConnell in the New York Post said that IQ can be changed. Jacob Weisberg of New York magazine, a true liberal die-hard, threw even more fences and evasions and escape hatches around the subject. Unfortunately, Murray and Herrnstein had already set the stage for this intellectually unserious treatment of their work by downplaying the idea of race differences even as they promoted it. Murray, in his many appearances on television, has been appallingly evasive about the true content and purport of his ideas. (Here is a letter I wrote to Murray about this.)

As disappointing as this hedging is, we need to recognize that it is a natural and predictable stage in an unfolding of thought that will take some time to reach clarity. It does not happen all at once, but necessarily goes through several stages. This is because the question of race and intelligence does not consist, as people seem to imagine, of just one idea, it consists of a constellation of ideas, which must be grasped one at a time until the larger scene comes into view. To illustrate this, I would like to tell the story of the involvement of one non-specialist—namely myself—with these ideas. The experience as I’ve lived through it can be compared to looking at the world through slightly out-of-focus lenses, then slowly sharpening the focus until what was hazy becomes clear. Or it is like something in the background of one’s field of vision slowly moving into the foreground.

In this process, rationalizations and evasions slip away, sometimes gradually, sometimes through startling insights that revolutionize one’s whole way of thinking. In telling about my own experience of these ideas as they came to me, one by one, I can perhaps give the reader a more comprehensive, if non- systematic, approach to understanding this subject.

"Chickens on an unsupplemented vegetarian diet typically fall short of an essential protein-based amino acid known as methionine, and without it, they fall ill. Worse, the birds will also turn on each other, seeking nutrients by pecking at each other, and these incidents can escalate into a henhouse bloodbath, farmers say."

Compiled with the cage free housing system, this is a recipe for disaster.
Highest mortality rate, requires more employee hours (searching for eggs) higher contamination of eggs with feces, bacteria, Weak members are preyed upon by the stronger and fail to thrive. Chickens are housed among the dead, unless employees go thru daily and remove them. Any stress can set them off and upon each other. I've seen it with turkeys, panic when a four wheeler goes by or a loud noise from a tractor or equipment that startles them. Surging and trampling leads to cannibalism of the weak and wounded. Or just dead from the trampling.

I believe it's Purdue who is being sued by some of their own contract producers over management practices. And Purdue is not looking like the good guy.

Freddie Gray's "switchblade": A knife clipped to his right front pocket. With a spring assist on the blade; a "one-hand-opener". I have one such, though most of mine have no assist, and I suspect they would be illegal in the east.

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